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Desert Notes
With each step the rocks are new Pink sunset, blue distance, pale but not brittle Against all my judgement I have the feeling that the rocks are alive We all move in the sun Naked, curled trees; one smooth branch of juniper in a slot canyon Raven on the sandstone gluck-gluck-click I am not alone…
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The First Stream in Utah
You never loved the water more. You blink at the stream and feel that you are home, but even the cottonwoods are darker, and carry the bulk of firs. The stream is not so shaded that you can’t see your reflection and the naked mountain behind your head. This is your great river now; this…
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Dear Sky
In the sky we find deep water Much like the glazed place on the open ocean; you know your reflection is there but you cannot see it. We call it the wandering place those of us who know what will happen to our questions, how they won’t be answered but swallowed into carpets of light,…
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Dusk Is Not A Summer Word
Dusk is not a summer word Because when the sun is behind the mountains the sky still holds, high up, stretching onward and onward, even once it is fully night the light holds on, into a silence, cool and echoing, like the moment when the sun has left your skin as the lingering warmth drains away, and…
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Lost is the Daylight Moon
There are times when I see the moon during the day, a grey-white cloud like the dying blossom of a wild onion, thin paper, peeled off, fragile and flickering and left behind in the dark autumn wind, and I stare, feeling that this moon is better suited to my sorrows, and I ask where…
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Who We Are
Watch; if we stare at other suns, we won’t see our own, and if we block our eyes we will see nothing but darkness, but look straight into it into the scalding water, pierce the steam, and so dies the life of shadow.
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The Robin’s Reflection
The robin flies into the window because glass does not shine like water; and there is another bird there, flat and strange and shimmering. This is the robin’s land of damp creeksides and there’s the nest among the maple towers, so he sings a song, beautiful and weaved of trills, and the sun moves along with his notes,…
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The Hazelnut Tree
The hazelnut tree, the old Corylus cornuta, is yellow rain beyond my window. The warm glow of dripping candles, the fringed hair of some ever living willow. It is the aftermist of an ocean wave, and riverbank leaves decaying in water. As I look at the hazelnut I forget about winter, because with those delicate catkins come…
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The First Falling of Snow
Low winter light buried by snow, all sounds threaded in gracile knots, while the trees drip, while we tingle with silence, we breath again, as though we have come up for air in a world that was once underwater.
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As All Fields Are Vulnerable
What I want to know is, when will it be enough? When will the fields be safe? The sun caught in the grasses, and the deer, silent in the dry fall wind, following shadows to the yellow oak tree, everything still mysterious at mid-afternoon, And the throat-soaked crow songs, like every moment is heavy with the abruptness…